"Gape" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it lies drinking in the salt water through one of its siphons, and discharging it again through the other. Put the shell into a rock pool, or a basin of water, and you will see the siphons clearly. The valves gape apart some three-quarters of an inch. The semi-pellucid orange "mantle" fills the intermediate space. Through that mantle, at the end from which the foot curves, the siphons protrude; two thick short tubes joined side by side, their lips fringed with pearly ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... Mary, "Oh, holy Lady!" exclaimed she, "oh, most pure and immaculate of virgins! thou seest our extremity. The ravager is at the gate, and there is none on earth to help us! Look down with pity, and grant that the earth may gape and swallow us rather than that our cloister ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... brothers and sisters have had any at all. Now, the careful mother-bird knows this very well, and she, therefore, divides everything among them, so that each has a bit in turn, and while she feeds them she begs the rest to be as patient as they can, and not flutter, and chirrup, and gape so widely, and above all things, to mind they do not tumble, or push each other, over the edge ...
— The Goat and Her Kid • Harriet Myrtle
... on dogs; citizens stand and gape, people come running up, others walk quietly to and fro, others play all sorts of pranks, shout ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... stopper on my going to sleep again, I used to rush out in a frightful state of wax, and show a leg. And then, being well up, you see, it was no use doing the downy again, so it was just as well to make one's twilight and go to chapel. Don't gape, Giglamps; it's beastly rude, and I havn't done yet. I'm going to tell you another dodge - one of old Smalls'. He invested money in an alarum, with a string from it tied on to the bed-clothes, so as to pull them off at whatever time you chose to set it. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... constructed, that, if there was once a breach in any essential part of it, the ruin of the whole, or nearly of the whole, was, at some time or other, a certainty. For that reason I honor and shall forever honor and love you, and those who first caused it to stagger, crack, and gape. Others may finish; the beginners have the glory; and, take what part you please at this hour, (I think you will take the best,) your first services will never be forgotten by a grateful country. Adieu! Present my best regards to those I know,—and as many as I know ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... morning, but Jimmy could do nothing but gape; his feet felt very heavy, and he wished that he had never put on the clown's clothes and left his own behind. Still he made sure that he should be able to reach Chesterham some day, and presently he passed a church and ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... hell have flung the dice; The destinies depend On feet that run for fearful price, And fangs that gape to rend; And still the footsteps of his Vice Pursue him to the end:— The feet of his incarnate Vice Shall ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... similarly absent. Later observations have shown that in this accident absence of hemorrhage is the rule and not the exception. The wound is generally lacerated and contused and the mouths of the vessels do not gape, but are twisted and crushed. The skin usually separates at the highest point and the muscles protrude, appearing to be tightly embraced and almost strangulated by the skin, and also by the tendons, vessels, and nerves which, crushed and twisted ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... ball was rather more amusing than I expected. Martha liked it very much, and I did not gape till the last quarter of an hour. It was past nine before we were sent for, and not twelve when we returned. The room ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Tito crept near softly, so softly that the Horse did not see her till she was within twenty feet; then he gave a start that swung the tightened picket-rope up into the air, and snorted gently. Tito went quietly forward, and opening her wide gape, took the rope in, almost under her ears, between the great scissor-like back teeth, then chewed it for a few seconds. The fibres quickly frayed, and, aided by the strain the nervous Horse still kept up, the last of the ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... characteristic features of an incised wound is its tendency to gape. This is evident in long skin wounds, and especially when the cut runs across the part, or when it extends deeply enough to divide muscular fibres at right angles to their long axis. The gaping of a wound, further, is more marked when the underlying tissues are in a state of tension—as, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... short story. I had been lounging around the big wheel for some time—that monster has a sort of fascination for me; it makes me feel like a small boy, unable to gape enough. I was looking at the people coming and going, and I almost forgot that it was noon, until I heard someone say close beside me, "Almost noon, Jack. Let's get out of this." That startled me. I had not thought it was so late, and I took a look at old Sol and ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... not read the Bible, it warn't good enough for him, The course we steered by that he said, would lead us all to sin; That we were damn'd and hell would gape, he often would us tell, I know that when I heard his jaw, it ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... into the great hazardous unknown; the very folk who stand there in their fishing-boats and look wonderingly after the Fram as she slowly and heavily steams along on her northward course. Many of them wave their sou'-westers and shout "Hurrah!" Others have barely time to gape at us in wonderment. In on the point are a troop of women waving and shouting; outside a few boats with ladies in light summer-dresses, and gentlemen at the oars entertaining them with small-talk as they wave their parasols and pocket-handkerchiefs. Yes; ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house itself, rests apart in a window-seat or other such nook and listens with stately approval ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... by the way, who taught her the necessity of regular and methodical long walks for the preservation of her health. When she returned there was always a crowd lounging about the landing waiting to gape at her and whisper. It was intoxicating to her, this delicious draught of the heady wine of fame; and Burlingham was not unprepared for the evidences that she thought pretty well of herself, felt that she had arrived. He laughed to himself indulgently. "Let the kiddie enjoy herself," thought ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the Huns did this. Why discuss what we have done? We have destroyed your city. Gape and stare, stupid fools! What does it matter to us? We took your precious town from you, because we wanted it. Now we don't want it any more. Here it is back again. With our love.) Some merry soldier wrote that up, I suppose. It ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... marched, some ten or fifteen fellows in a dirty half uniform, I knew not what it was, while straggling out behind them seemed to follow the entire population of the hamlet. The old and gray-haired fathers, the mothers, the stalwart children and toddling babies, all came to stand and gape. In the lead there strode a burly ruffian, proud of his low ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... having with much difficulty kept clear of the rocks: The passage being very narrow, we sent the boats, about noon, to seek for anchorage on the north shore. At this time, Cape Notch bore W. by N. 1/2 N. distant between three and four leagues, and Gape Quod E. 1/2 N. distant ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... lightning revelation made him stand up in the carriage and gape at the photographs of Irish scenery in front ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... of bachelor life, every man reckons the independence of his getting up. The fancies of the morning compensate for the glooms of evening. A bachelor turns over and over in his bed: he is free to gape loud enough to justify apprehensions of murder, and to scream at a pitch authorizing the suspicion of joys untold. He can forget his oaths of the day before, let the fire burn upon the hearth and the candle sink to its ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Host, and the world prostrates itself. A great procession of dignitaries with torches bears a fragment of the original cradle of the Holy Bambino from its chapel to the high altar, through the swaying crowd that gape and gaze and stare and sneer and adore. And thus the evening passes. When the clock strikes midnight all the bells ring merrily, Mass commences at the principal churches, and at San Luigi dei Francesi ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... true, true to their disgrace. They both felt the reproach. How were they better than the rest of the neighborhood, who were content to gossip and gape and take the fortunes of the Tristrams as mere ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... exercising the power of life and death over their slaves, and all low-born plebeians. They flay men alive, both piecemeal, and by stripping off the whole skin. No servant while waiting on them, or standing at their table, may gape, speak, or spit, so that their mouths ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... massy earth, &c. As the poet launches forth on his voyage upon the ocean of mind, the earth behind him seems to gape, and the sky above him to open: his course however is still held on in darkness—the arcanum is hardly or not ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... immense crowd. At a smaller ball Theodora's exquisite beauty must have commanded instant attention, but this was a special occasion, and the world was too occupied with a desire to gape at the foreign king to trouble about any new-comers. Certainly for the ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... great Gods pass through the great Time-hall, Stately and high; The little men climb the low clay wall To gape and spy; "We wait for the Gods," the little men cry, "But these ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Angler of British coasts, but adapted to life in the great abysses. They are very dark in colour, and delicately built; they possess well-developed luminous organs. The third form is called Chauliodus, a predatory animal with large gape and formidable teeth.] ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... main, Tamed all the dangers of untraversed waves, Hung o'er their clefts, and topt their surging graves, Saw traitorous seas o'er coral mountains sweep, Red thunders rock the pole and scorch the deep, Death rear his front in every varying form, Gape from the shoals and ride the roaring storm, My struggling bark her seamy planks disjoin, Rake the rude rock and drink the copious brine. Till the tired elements are lull'd at last, And milder suns allay the billowing blast, Lead on the trade winds with unvarying ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... long to take her in my arms, I feel that my better plan will be to seek once more the quiet, empty steppe, and, bearing in me the recollection of this woman, to resume my lonely journey towards the region where the silver wall of the mountains merges with the sky, and the dark ravines gape at the steppe with their chilly jaws. At the moment, however, I cannot so do, for the Cossacks have temporarily ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... gingerbread. Make you it fit. He that hath pleas'd her grace Thus far, shall not now crincle for a little.— Gape, sir, and let him ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... of the seneschal had scarcely been put forth, when, lo! the astonished deputy shrank back in dismay. A sudden change came over his angry countenance—a look of surprise mingled with horror, as though he could have wished the earth to gape and hide him from the object of his apprehensions. He stood trembling, speechless, pale as ashes, expecting immediate and condign punishment. So suddenly this change was wrought that the spectators fancied it to be some direct interposition from heaven; concluding ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... president of the Institute, and a prominent business man of Chung-king, and Mr. Cheo, the elderly head of the Chinese Imperial Telegraph, who has now been succeeded by another member whom I also met. When I left they all escorted me most courteously to my chair, the passers-by stopping to gape with surprise. So far as I know the club is a new departure in mission work, and most worthy of support as a rational and hopeful method of presenting the best of Christian civilization to a class often repelled by ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... Rub! Rub! Till they're rugged at edge and at rim; Scrub! Scrub! Scrub! Till with scissors the cuffs I must trim. Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam; And all the buttonholes gape, and the studs Drop out in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... careful not to wind on too much thread at once, or the blades will gape open at the ends and the thread get soiled by constant contact with ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... not? The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage—who can tell?—but truth—truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff—with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... not well brook to hear the girl blamed, and both he and Humfrey could not help treating her with a kind of deference that made the younger brothers gape and wonder what had come to Humfrey on his travels "to make him treat our Cis as a ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... greatly excited). I'll tell thee when I catch my breath! I've been in the stocks with the whole of Wollaston to gape at me. Puritan heads a-wagging! Puritan eyes a-staring! And after the stocks 'twas towards the whipping-post that they were leading me! But I've learned a trick or two from our lanes here at Merrymount. I gave a sudden twist—the constable loosened his hold—I ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... that the good lady I have mentioned was, in the discharge of her function, showing the apartments to a cockney from London—not one of your quiet, dull, commonplace visitors, who gape, yawn, and listen with an acquiescent "umph" to the information doled out by the provincial cicerone. No such thing: this was the brisk, alert agent of a great house in the city, who missed no opportunity of doing business, as he termed it—that is, of putting off the goods of his employers, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the wedge was driven to the heart, until again the sides were spread a-gape. In climbed the giant,—he did not think the fit would be ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... Henry, be thy title right or wrong, Lord Clifford vows to fight in thy defence. May that ground gape and swallow me alive, Where I shall kneel to him ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... doctors, as you may recall. Also his mouth was very large, which was a pity, because when he stopped before them and bowed in a polite way, all of a sudden he opened this great mouth and gaped; and when poor, sleepy Little Boy saw this, what could he do but gape for company, and at once fall down sound asleep before the kind Prince ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... numbing shock did register; and it may be assumed that he jolted rather horribly at the splintering bite of bone into brain. But who can say he did not reach a point-of-prescience, that his neuro-thalamics did not leap to span the eons, and gape in horror, in that precise and endless time just before his brains spewed in a gush of gray and gore, ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... been destroyed by an unhealthful inquisitiveness! It is seen in all directions. There are those who stand with the eye-stare and mouth-gape of curiosity. They are the first to hear a falsehood, build it another story high and two wings to it. About other people's apparel, about other people's business, about other people's financial condition, about other people's affairs, they are ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... seek to bridge the chasm 'Twixt man to-day and protoplasm, Who theorize and probe and gape, And finally evolve an ape— Yours is a harmless sort of cult, If you are pleased with the result. Some folks admit, with cynic grace, That you have rather proved your case. These dogmatists are so severe! Enough for me that Fanny's here, Enough that, having long survived Pre-Eveic forms, she ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... indeed is the community of interest, delightful the intercourse which a common foible begets; but correspondingly bitter and distressful is the forced union of nervous zeal and pitiless indifference. Spare us the so-called friends who come and gape and stare and go! What is more painful than the chatter of the connoisseur as it falls upon the long ears of the ignoramus! Collecting is a secret sin—the great pushing public must be kept out. It is sheer madness to puff and praise your hobby, and to invite Dick, Tom, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... murmur in Apache. The Indians pushed forward as their leader snapped open the padlock. The heavy door swung open. All surged into the still-room except one of Lennon's guards, and he craned his neck to gape at the still. Into Lennon's ear breathed ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... had been able to make neither head nor tail of it, and seeing lights in the house, he had just dropped in for a glass of porter - and at this point he became aware of the third person. Archie saw the cod's mouth and the blunt lips of Glenkindie gape at him for a moment, and the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and effects in Nature are not without charm and beauty, as the little cracks in the crust of a loaf, though not intended by the baker, are agreeable and invite the appetite. Thus figs, when they are ripest, open and gape; and olives, when they are near decaying, are peculiarly attractive. The bending of an ear of corn, the frown of a lion, the foam of a boar, and many other like things, if you take them singly, are far from beautiful; but seen in their natural relations are characteristic and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... what Ulysses got, But closed the bargain on the spot. A nice machine the birds devise To bear their pilgrim through the skies. Athwart her mouth a stick they throw: "Now bite it hard, and don't let go," They say, and seize each duck an end, And, swiftly flying, upward tend. It made the people gape and stare Beyond the expressive power of words, To see a tortoise cut the air, Exactly poised between two birds. "A miracle," they cried, "is seen! There goes the flying tortoise queen!" "The queen!" ('twas thus the tortoise spoke;) "I'm truly that, without a joke." Much better ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... opinion, unless we have a lively sense of the far-reaching ramifications of cause and consequence, of the subtle and often unexpected interconnections between different industries and different markets. To gape at these complexities in a confused stupor is as foolish as it is to ignore them. But confusion and stupor are only too likely to represent our final state of mind, if we attempt to deal with these complications, one by one as they occur to us, in a piecemeal and haphazard fashion. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... and the other idle hussies to gape and grin at? No. Bring them to the library," he snapped, and then stalked off, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... desirable, but are not to be attempted twice under penalty of gastric inconvenience. Plums and nuts abound, and are followed by a second course of hard, unripe, and tasteless nectarines and peaches. The season is closing fast, for the prickly pods of the ripening chestnut now begin to gape, and the indifferent grapes of the district attain their imperfect maturity, and are gathered for the wine-press. September is in its last week, and in less than another month we must all migrate somewhere for the winter. The baths, on the 15th ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... mak; but as sooin as they pop into th' hive o' St. Stephen's yo niver hear a muff—they're as quite as waxwark. Aw varrily believe 'at one hauf on 'em niver oppen the maath throo th' yaar end to year end, nobbut when they're sleepy, then they may gape a bit, but they do it as quiet as they can. As for them chaps 'at tawk soa mich befoor they goa, abaat passin' laws to give iverybody a paand a wick whether they work or laik, an' reducin' th' workin haars to three haars a day an' ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... visitors are not left to gape in ignorance at what they see. Professors of the highest attainments in antiquarian science—Professor Thomsen, M. Worsaae, and others—men who, in fact, have created a science out of an undigested mass of relics, curiosities, and specimens, of the arts in the early ages—go round with ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... arriving after long hours of journey through the battlefields, might sigh with relief, gape with pleasure, then hurry away down deflagged streets, beneath houses roped with green-leafed garlands, to eat divinely at Moitrier's restaurant, and join the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... He who does not gape after the favour of princes, as after a thing he cannot live without, does not much concern himself at the coldness of their reception and countenance, nor at the inconstancy of their wills. He who does not brood over his children or his honours with a slavish propension, ceases ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... sweet, full of country charm and suburban peace, to feed them.... On the title-page there were the old names and some new ones, but the same grist,—a "homely" story of "real life" among the tenements, a "humorous" story of the new school, an article on a marvellous invention to set the public on the gape, etc.... Fosdick had an article of a serious nature, on Trades Unions and Socialism. 'So Dickie, having ceased to roll about the world,' thought Isabelle, 'has begun to write about it.' She turned down the page at his article ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... to rights. Suddenly the ship plunged, and the man disappeared into a surging wave. He rose again, vanished a second time, reappeared once more, and again the blows of his hammer were heard, and again the boiling whirl of foam swallowed him up. At every plunge Death seemed to gape for him; but drenched, gasping, and half stifled as he was, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Akakiyevich. He simply did not know where he stood, or where to put his hands, his feet, and his whole body. Finally he sat down by the players, looked at the cards, gazed at the face of one and another, and after a while began to gape, and to feel that it was wearisome, the more so, as the hour was already long past when he usually went to bed. He wanted to take leave of the host, but they would not let him go, saying that he must not fail to drink ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... silver in her expression. She was right, incontestably, for what he saw in her face was the truth, and strangely, without consequence, while their talk of it as dreadful was still in the air, she appeared to present it as inordinately soft. This, prompting bewilderment, made him but gape the more gratefully for her revelation, so that they continued for some minutes silent, her face shining at him, her contact imponderably pressing, and his stare all kind but all expectant. The end, none the less, was that what he had expected failed to ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... down) Be off, all of you— don't stand and gape at a woman who is crying! (Felicity exits R., D. Mercury assisted off. Fel. places his chair back as before. Dormer goes off through the group; the rest sorrowfully disperse, looking over their shoulders at Kate. As they ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... reflection: "Alas! What an inconsiderable creature am I in this prodigious ocean of waters; my existence is of no concern to the universe; I am reduced to a kind of nothing, and am less than the least of the works of God." It so happened that an oyster which lay in the neighbourhood chanced to gape and swallow it up in the midst of this its humble soliloquy. The drop, says the fable, lay a great while hardening in the shell, until by degrees it was ripened into a pearl, which, falling into the hands of a diver after a long ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... became, by purchase, the property of Mr. Joseph Banks, M.P. for Grimsby, born in 1681, and eventually came to his distinguished descendant, Sir Joseph Banks; and on his death some of the Mareham land passed to the ancestors of the present Sir Henry M. Hawley. Other proprietors are now Major Gape, Messrs. J. R. Chapman, Joseph ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... utterly deserted, formed of lofty ledges of rock, hollowed into caverns underneath, by the insidious beating of the trade wind waves. The chiseled doorways to those caves are rare specimens of Nature's mysterious work; some large, some small and of queer, fantastic shapes; that black-mouthed gape at chance passers, while towering high above, a roof of table land—arid, scorching pampas, is just as uninviting as the water way below. So desolate is that part of the coast that it is but little known. Don Nicholas and a group of Peruvian ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... a strange world that we live in. Things turn out in a very odd manner. Every day produces something more wonderful than another. Earthquakes, murders, conflagrations, inundations, jubilees, operas, marriages, and pestilence, unite to make mortal men gape and stare. But your last letter and mine being wrote on the same day, astonishes me still more than all these ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... at last for the 3d of March. New formalities again set the city in motion, and the alternate visits of ceremony on the part of the ambassadors kept us always on our legs. We were, moreover, compelled to watch closely; as we were not only to gape about, but to note every thing well, in order to give a proper report at home, and even to make out many little memoirs, on which my father and Herr von Koenigsthal had deliberated, partly for our exercise and partly for their own information. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the horse were the forepartes of this greedie birde aduaunced, whence as his manner is, hee reacht out his long necke to the raines of the bridle, thinking they had beene yron, and styll seemed to gape after the golden bit, and euer as the courser dyd rayse or curuet, to haue swallowed it halfe in. His winges, which hee neuer vseth but running, beeing spreaded full sayle, made his lustie steede as proude vnder him as he had beene some other Pegasus, and so quieueringly and ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... be a stream of dirty water, flying far up in the air, as though a fireman's hose had been turned on! That must be the dark-looking crude oil, mingled with water, Toby conjectured, as he continued to gape and wonder. Then after all the suspicions of Maurice Dangerfield had proven true, and the Pontico Hills region did harbor ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... is action! Every one Comes as spectator, and the show's the fun. Let but the plot be spun off fast and thickly, So that the crowd shall gape in broad surprise, Then have you made a wide impression quickly, You are the man they'll idolize. The mass can only be impressed by masses; Then each at last picks out his proper part. Give much, and then to each one something passes, And each one leaves the house with happy heart. Have ...
— Faust • Goethe
... forts, irrigation of deserts, reclamation of the Dead Sea, passionate temples clapped to the lower clouds about the perpetual lamp, and that baroque Art of the Orient which at the Judges progresses in Summer through the country would draw multitudes of foreigners to gape at so great pomp, at Corinthian cities full of grace and riches which had arisen to crown with many crowns that plain of Mesopotamia, and where desolate Tyre had mourned her purples, and old Tadmor in the Wilderness (Palmyra) had sat in dirt; to gape, too, at ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... by a relaxity of feelings, in which there is a disposition to stretch, gape, and yawn, ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... cantrip[78] slight, Each in its cauld hand held a light, By which heroic Tam was able To note upon the haly table A murderer's banes in gibbet airns;[79] Twa span-lang, wee unchristened bairns; A thief new-cutted frae a rape, Wi' his last gasp his gab[80] did gape; Five tomahawks, wi' bluid red-rusted; Five scimitars wi' murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled; A knife a father's throat had mangled, Whom his ain son o' life bereft— The gray hairs yet stack to the heft: Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu', ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... The gape worm may be termed the bete noir of the poultry-keeper—his greatest enemy—whether he be farmer or fancier. It is true there are some who declare that it is unknown in their poultry-yards—that they have never been troubled with it at all. These are apt to lay it down, as I saw a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... Edinburgh gape at my sermons. In the middle of an exquisite address to Virtue, beginning 'O Virtue!' I saw a rascal gaping as if ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... listened, he realised that there was resentment everywhere against the Sinn Feiners. Behind one of the gates of the Park, a Sinn Feiner was lying face downwards in the hole he had made to be a trench, and the crowd climbed up the railings to gape at him. A youth thrust his way through the people and peered at the dead man, and then he turned to the crowd and said to them, "Let's get the poor chap out and bury him!" A girl looked at him resentfully, and hurried to a towsled woman standing on the kerb, and told her ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... 'Gossip' would have been better, Sir, and more appropriate; and under that modest title you would not have used the unintelligible stars that blaze to so little purpose in my last paper. Ah! Sir, you should have considered how difficult it is to gape—shocking word!—to gape gracefully! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... he asked them, than their not being invited to the entertainments of people in upper Fifth Avenue? He made them own that if they were let across that barrier the whole second cabin would have a logical right to follow; and they were silenced. But they continued to gape at him with their sincere, gentle eyes whenever he returned to the barrier in his walk, till he could bear it no longer, and strolled off toward ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the valley, they soon began to miss the agreeable life and companionable echoes of the canon they had quitted. Huge fissures in the parched soil seemed to gape as with thirsty mouths. A few squirrels darted from the earth, and disappeared as mysteriously before the jingling mules. A gray wolf trotted leisurely along just ahead. But whichever way Father Jose turned, the mountain always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... weight did throw At Skeggi's throat a while ago: Over the battle ogress ran The red blood of the serving-man; Her deadly iron mouth did gape Above him, till clean out of shape She tore his head and let out life: And certainly ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... Chases were off—in a cab engaged by Max, in deference to Sally's wishes. Neil and Dorothy took a jocose farewell, the one declaring that their presence had stretched the apartment till it could be seen to gape at the seams, the other vowing that Sally must come to see her soon, in order to be able to take a full breath again. Then the ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... do you do?' prettily," she cries in a bantering tone, "and don't gape like an overgrown school-boy, if you love ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... at contrast the ring of his deep bass to the tentative falsetto of Mr. Lincoln's opening words. If Stephen expected the Judge to tremble, he was greatly disappointed. Mr. Douglas was far from dismay. As if to show the people how lightly he held his opponent's warnings, he made them gape by putting things down Mr. Lincoln's shirt-front and taking them out of his mouth: But it appeared to Stephen, listening with all his might, that the Judge was a trifle more on the defensive than his attitude might lead one to expect. Was he not among his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Cham. Gape, earth, and swallow me to quick destruction, If I forgive your house! Ye've overpower'd me now! But, hear me, heav'n!—Ah! here's a scene of death! My sister, my Monimia, breathless!——Now, Ye powers above, if ye have justice, ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... point we could easily see the wide gape of the Rembwe, the south-eastern influent, or rather fork, of the Gaboon, which rises in the south-western versant of some meridional chain, and which I was assured can be ascended in three tides. The people told me when too late of a great cavity or sink, which they called Wonga-Wonga; ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... warrant, was as full of curtsies, as if I had been her godmother. The truth on't is, I did endeavour to make her look like a Christian—and she was sensible of it, for she thanked me, and gave me two apples, piping hot, out of her under- petticoat pocket. Ha, ha, ha: and t'other did so stare and gape, I fancied her like the front of her father's hall; her eyes were the two jut-windows, and her mouth the great door, most hospitably kept open for ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... only one of the quartet unable to give utterance to his feelings. He could only cower there, and gape, while the unknown sailing craft was bearing down straight for the little motor-boat, and apparently bound ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... shade and salience. The revulsion, for our friend, had become, before he knew it, immense—this drop, in the act of apprehension, to the sense of his adversary's inscrutable manoeuvre. That meaning at least, while he gaped, it offered him; for he could but gape at his other self in this other anguish, gape as a proof that he, standing there for the achieved, the enjoyed, the triumphant life, couldn't be faced in his triumph. Wasn't the proof in the splendid covering ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... the average tourist, let him compare the hundreds who gape at the paint pots and geysers of Yellowstone with the dozens who exult in the sublimated glory of the colorful canyon. Or let him listen to the table-talk of a party returned from Crater Lake. Or let him recall the statistical superlatives which made up his ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... reap no gain where former rule hath taught still peace to grow. No foreign banish'd wight shall anchor in this port; Our realm it brooks no strangers' force, let them elsewhere resort. Our rusty sword with rest shall first his edge employ, To poll their tops that seek such change, and gape for joy. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... a frantic dance round the combatants, screamed shrilly, and made dangerous, ineffectual darts at Tray. The servant girl neither danced, nor screamed, nor made darts; she stood stolidly still, with something between a gape and a grin on her broad red face. She had not the passion for dog-fights entertained by the gamins of the streets, such fights were simply immaterial trifles to her amidst the weightier concerns of her life; and she had seen ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... is neither the featherless biped of the Greek Philosopher, nor the tool-using animal of the Sage of Chelsea. For animals, too, have their tools, and man, in his visible flounces, has feathers enough to make even a peacock gape. Both my Philosophers have hit wide of the mark this time. And Man, to my way of thinking, is a flounce-wearing Spirit. Indeed, flounces alone, the invisible ones in particular, distinguish us from the beasts. For like ourselves they have their fashions ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the assurance of old friendship. Nor was he astonished that even in the wan light those brick-dust cheeks should deepen to terra-cotta, those hard blue eyes glitter with recognition, and the small thin-lipped mouth lose for a moment its immobility and gape, yes, gape, in the amazement of meeting somebody whom he never could have expected to meet at such an hour in such ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... yawning, especially while with any one, or in conversation. For it is a plain sign of a certain dislike of those with whom you dwell. If you cannot keep from yawning, at least be careful not to speak while doing so, and not to gape excessively; press your mouth adroitly or n turning ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... with yourself, with what a sting we read Plato's "Atlantic" and the conclusion of the "Iliad," and how we hanker and gape after the rest of the tale, as when some beautiful temple or theatre is shut up. But now the informing of ourselves with the truth herself is a thing so delectable and lovely as if our very life and being were for the sake of knowing. And the darkest and grimmest ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... each phrase in as Greek a fashion as English will bear: while, with respect to amplifications and embellishments, anything rather than, with the good farmer, experience that most signal of mortifications, 'to gape for AEschylus and get Theognis.' I should especially decline,—what may appear to brighten up a passage,—the employment of a new word for some old one—[Greek: phonos], or [Greek: megas], or [Greek: telos], with its congeners, recurring four times in three lines.... Further,—if I ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Others still gape t' anticipate The cabinet-designs of fate; Apply to wizards, to foresee 25 What shall and what shall never be; And, as those vultures do forebode, Believe events prove bad or good: A flam more senseless than the roguery Of old aruspicy and aug'ry. 30 That out of garbages of ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the low hills of the Alps, past a massive, fortified monastery of the Templars whose windows gape in ruin; past Saint-Martin-de-Bromes with its high, slim, crenellated watch-tower; past many quiet little villages where in the old times, Taine says, "Good people lived as in an eagle's nest, happy as long as ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... of modern types. Teleosts were now abundant. The ocean teemed with sharks, some of them being voracious monsters seventy- five feet and even more in length, with a gape of jaw of six feet, as estimated by the size ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... to put his head in, That looks like a black pot tipp'd with tin; While with antic gestures he doth gape and grin; The sisters admire, and he wheedles them in, Who to cheat their husbands think no sin; 'Tis ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... your reproach of me, and say, that you will not be able to help yourself when the day of trial and judgment, of which I was speaking, comes upon you; you will go before the judge, the son of Aegina, and, when he has got you in his grip and is carrying you off, you will gape and your head will swim round, just as mine would in the courts of this world, and very likely some one will shamefully box you on the ears, and put upon ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... where Fergusson was not sacrificed to the credit of his follower's originality. There is a kind of gaping admiration that would fain roll Shakespeare and Bacon into one, to have a bigger thing to gape at; and a class of men who cannot edit one author without disparaging all others. They are indeed mistaken if they think to please the great originals; and whoever puts Fergusson right with fame cannot do better than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Des Sarts, as yet un-visited, we skirted the gape of the crater, climbing over craggy accumulations of wreckage, and traversed a tunnel with an arched roof and mildewed brick walls, like a wine vault. The floor of it was littered with the knapsacks and water bottles of dead or captured men, with useless rifles ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... wholly; and by that of Francesca they are touched to tenderest sympathy. But Ugolino is to Lear what a single fire-freighted cloud that discharges five or six terrific strokes is to a night-long tempest, wherein the thundering heavens gape with a hundred flashes. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... besides these last mentioned, there are three distinct species of worms (called the oyster-worm,) half an inch long, found in oysters, which shine in the dark like glow-worms. The sea-star, cockles, and muscles, are the great enemies of the oyster. The first gets within the shell when they gape, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... to stop workin', heh?" demanded their father, fiercely. "Leave me see you at it, do you hear? You stop another time to gape around and I 'll lick you good! Stop ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... the matter with you, Cecil? Don't gape at me like that, and come along at once, unless you want to be left behind. Yes, we are very short-handed and the chief let me go down to see Mr. Trent. He didn't expect for a moment that I should get him to talk to me, but I did, and he let me sketch the house. I am awfully pleased with myself ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in a jostling crowd, soared away after the midges and May-flies and pestilent gnats that rise from marsh and pond to hold their joyous dances under the blue dome. Continually rushing open-mouthed after these, they have stretched their gape from ear to ear; but their bills have dwindled by disuse and left only an apology for ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the holly praires ye prepare for me— The comforts to a parting soule? Still I thanck ye, Most hartely and lovingly I thanck ye. Will not a single death give satisfaction, O you most greedy men and most ungratefull,— The quiet sleep of him you gape to swallow, But you must trym up death in all his terrors And add to soules departing frights and feavors? Hang up a hundred Coffins; I dare view 'em, And on their heads subscribe a hundred treasons It shakes not me, thus dare I smile upon 'em And strongly thus outlooke ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... meets a lion, waster of herds. What, woman, hast thou heard not of the heaps Of slain, that into Xanthus' rushing stream Were thrust by these mine hands?—or hast thou heard In vain, because the Blessed Ones have stol'n Wit and discretion from thee, to the end That Doom's relentless gulf might gape for thee?" ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... that Smith is a common-place, stereotyped kind of fellow, exactly like hundreds of other men in his class. She does not appear to notice the ghastly defects in his education, tastes, and character, which gape before all the world else. She does not see that he is without the morbidezza of culture; that he finds no appogiatura in art; that he never rises at midnight, amid lightning and rain, to emit an inarticulate cry of aesthetic ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... result. Observe my case— I, a magistrate, come here to draw Money to buy oar-blades, and what happens? The women slam the door full in my face. But standing still's no use. Bring me a crowbar, And I'll chastise this their impertinence. What do you gape at, wretch, with dazzled eyes? Peering for a tavern, I suppose. Come, force the gates with crowbars, prise them apart! I'll prise away myself ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... cause of it," she cried impatiently. "Canst do naught but stare? Am I the mother of a fool? Wilt thou simper and gape and trifle away thy days whilst that dog-descended Frank tramples thee underfoot, using thee but as a stepping-stone to the power that should be thine own? And that be so, Marzak, I would thou hadst been ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... here is a puzzle, for some of them have great big bodies, but small heads and tiny mouths; others have bodies like ribbons, but large heads and huge mouths, and some are such gluttons that they swallow fish twice their own size! This sounds absurd, but it is true. Their mouths gape open like trap-doors, and their stomachs are made to stretch, to hold their huge meals! There are other terrors of the deep with such big teeth that they cannot shut their mouths. No doubt the sea holds yet other weird fish ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... somewhat disheveled and intimidated flock when we emerged from our train and found Duncan awaiting us with an amazingly big touring-car which, as he explained with a short laugh at my gape of wonder, the Barcona Mines would ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Cinque ace! well, curse it! the same throw over again! 'Tis too bad. I missed taking you last time, with that stupid blot you've covered—and now, by Jove, it ruins me. There's no playing when fellows are getting up every minute to gape after doctors' coaches, and leaving the door open—hang it, I've lost the game by it—gammoned twice already. 'Tis very pleasant. I only wish when gentlemen interrupt play, they'd be good enough to ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... gape on the mother was to remind her of one class of inhabitants of her native rivers—the crocodile—and cause her laughingly to style the child her "young crocodile." The Malagasy word for crocodile is mamba, and thus the child came by his name, with the usual prefix, Ra-Mamba. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... objects of admiration, and the War Office would have howled with exquisite torture at sight of their hair and clothes. Speak of wrapping clothes around head or body to keep out the dust? It is sheer nonsense to prate so. Why it is hard enough to gape and gasp and catch a mouthful of sanded breath, without that added worry. There is nothing for it, but to grin and bear it and get through with the swallowing of that proverbial peck of dust in a life-time, as ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... in effecting a landing on a flat rock. But the fish died hard. Catfish do not give up the ghost in a hurry. Its throat was becoming congested, but the snake's distended jaws must have ached. It was like a petrified gape. Then the spectators became very curious and close in their scrutiny, and the snake determined to withdraw from the public gaze and finish the business in hand to its own notions. But, when gently but firmly remonstrated ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... whistle or to pray for Stingaree. Meanwhile the present was no mean occasion, and Fergus was glad to see that Macbean had thrown open the official doors in his absence. They had often agreed that it would be worth all their labor to enlighten Donkin by letting the pit gape under his nose as he entered the bank. Fergus glanced over his shoulder, saw the other hurrying, and hurried himself in order to take up a good position for seeing the cashier's face. He was in the middle of the treacherous floor before he perceived that it was not Macbean in the ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... thing too! Hideous place, where you couldn't do right if you died for it! The fire began there—stoves no doubt— and there it would have stopped if any one had had any sense; but there they would run and gape, and the more I tried to get them to form a chain and drench the warehouses, the more they wouldn't do it. And when the flame once got hold of the paper—did you see it?— it was not a thing to forget. I verily believe the whole town ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... told you, I warned you. I left you alone for ten weeks; but could that make you doubt it was coming? Not for worlds, not for millions, shall you give yourself to that roaring crowd. Don't ask me to care for them, or for any one! What do they care for you but to gape and grin and babble? You are ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... want?" he called, and, though he used no name, Flora saw he knew with whom he was speaking. The Chinaman stood immobile, lifting his round, white face, whose mouth seemed to gape a little. Harry leaned far out and lowered ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... the favourites of fortune? He succeeded to the seat on a camel vacated by the ill-fated Binks, and every jolt hurt his side; the head and hand wounds were not much affected by the motion, but every violent jerk caused the other to gape and bleed, and the dressing had to be renewed at every halt where water was obtainable. But the comrade who rode alongside and congratulated him on not having any gun-shot wounds meant well, and he restrained his impatience. Only when Grady, whom he credited with more sense, went ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Darnley. Nay, ye gape on me— What, doth he sleep, or feeds, or plays at games? Why, I would see him; I am weary for his sake; Bid my lord in.-Nathless he will but chide; Nay, fleer and laugh: what should one say to him? There ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that the procession looked strange. File clerks and receptionists stopped their work to gape at the four bedizened walkers and their plainly dressed satellites. Malone needed no telepathic talent to tell what ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... is the egg of Fear— Only lidless eyes are clear. Cobra-poison none may leech. Even so with Cobra-speech. Open talk shall call to thee Strength, whose mate is Courtesy. Send no lunge beyond thy length; Lend no rotten bough thy strength. Gauge thy gape with buck or goat, Lest thine eye should choke thy throat, After gorging, wouldst thou sleep? Look thy den is hid and deep, Lest a wrong, by thee forgot, Draw thy killer to the spot. East and West and North and South, Wash thy hide and close thy mouth. (Pit and ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... of a cupboard a polecat lies Laughing between his paws, And there's more than a hint of amused surprise In the gape of the lynx, in the marten's eyes, In the poise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... on the gape, auld wife," he sang; "your skirt's on the gape; as use-u-al," he drawled; "as use-u-al. It was always like that; and it always scunnered me, for I aye liked things tidy—though I never got them. However, I maunna ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown |
